A smart grid is a transactive grid.
- Lynne Kiesling
Archive for January, 2023

Transmission: Key To Our Clean Energy Future

As discussed in Bill Gates’ latest Gates Notes, transmission is the key to our clean energy future: My first job, in high school, was writing software for the entity that controls the power grid in the Northwest. It was an amazing learning experience. We were computerizing the grid, and I got to work with some […]

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The UK Is Paying People To Not Use Electricity

Via Quartz, a look at a UK scheme designed to reduce the peak-demand spikes that lead to higher use of non-renewable energy: For several hours this week and through the rest of the winter, UK residents can earn money by turning lights off, unplugging laptops, and using the microwave to heat dinner instead of cooking it in an electric […]

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Octopus Energy To Create Virtual Power Plant In Texas

Via Smart Energy International, a report on a Octopus Energy’s plans to create a virtual power plant in Texas: Renewable energy retailer Octopus Energy US is partnering with Enphase Energy, Inc., a supplier of microinverter-based solar and battery systems, to create a Texan Virtual Power Plant (VPP). With the partnership, Octopus Energy customers in the US […]

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Hey EV Owners: It’d Take a Fraction of You to Prop Up the Grid

Courtesy of WIRED, an article on the potential for EV battery power to help make the grid more stable in times of high energy demand: AT FIRST GLANCE, electric vehicles seem like rolling disasters for the power grid. Surely the ancient, creaky network in the United States can’t handle the demand for charging those massive batteries. But a new analysis suggests that […]

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Who Needs Transmission Wires Anyway?

Via the Institute for Local Self Reliance, a podcast on the potential for the case for generating power where it is consumed: For this episode of the Local Energy Rules Podcast, host John Farrell is joined by Dan Juhl, Partner at E2SG Partners. Juhl and his partners develop clean energy projects — in particular, integrated systems […]

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EVs: Mini Power Plants — on Wheels

Via Wired, a look at how EVs – as the heart of a distributed energy network -will be hard at work, even when they’re stationary. Electric vehicles (EVs) are not new. Battery-powered cars were on city roads more than a century ago. And sales of EVs have been growing steadily over the past decade. EV adoption is […]

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About This Blog And Its Authors
Grid Unlocked is powered by two eco-preneurs who analyze and reference articles, reports, and interviews that can help unlock the nascent, complex and expanding linkages between smart meters, smart grids, and above all: smart markets.

Based on decades of experience and interest in conservation, Monty Simus believes that a truly “smart” grid must be a “transactive” grid, unshackled from its current status as a so-called “natural monopoly.”

In short, an unlocked grid must adopt and harness the power of markets to incentivize individual users, linked to each other on a large scale, who change consumptive behavior in creative ways that drive efficiency and bring equity to use of the planet's finite and increasingly scarce resources.